Ziro Festival of Music 2017

As they say ‘That a man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”

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Travel has taught me a lot & has made me realize that life is not about living in luxury n having materialist possessions. Life is only about being happy & my travels have given me enough terrific moments to keep for my entire life. I consider myself lucky as I always had the best set of friends & travel buddies (& I still have) whom I only have to notify when & where are we travelling to. But in the last 6 years I never had the courage to travel Solo (except for few treks with agencies which aren’t in particular solo trips).

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But with Arunachal trip that was all about to change! With no daily itinerary in place and with no plan whatsoever this trip did end up teaching me a lot then I ever expected …Tripping to ZFM 2017 now happens to be one of the best decisions of my life! .

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“Are you going by yourself?”

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“Yes.”

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“But…how do you do that?”

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“I will board the train. And I go. By myself.”

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Confused looks!

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I had this conversation about 10-15 times with different people whomsoever I used to inform that I am travelling Solo this time. Some went on to ask; Do you really need to go alone? Can’t you take someone with you? Don’t you have any friends left? Where is Joy, Nakul or Chetan? Are you going crazy? Are you getting into depression? Why are you going alone? Why are you doing so?

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& the only answer I then could come up with was.. ‘It’s simple! To me, travel is a personal experience. It’s a chance to learn about myself; who am I and what do I want from life’. But on this trip I realized that when you remove yourself from your life back home, you’re able to take that time to reflect and see things in your life a little differently. However, when you take a bit of home with you (i.e. friends), that becomes a lil harder to do.

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And then, when you are alone, there are no limitations. You can go north or south, by boat or by train, you can just sit on the street for the whole day and watch the world go by. There are no rules. There’s no one else to worry about and no one checking up on you. You can eat whatever you want and sleep wherever you want. For once, you can finally just ask yourself what you want to do today, and then do it. In the process, you’ll learn things about yourself that will surprise even you.

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Nevertheless I did end up making so many friends on this trip and everyone had some stories to share. But it was while we were stuck in landslides on our way to Ziro from Naharlagun, (a total distance of 105 Kms which eventually took more than 8 hours to complete) I was cribbing about getting late and about my day getting wasted, my friend from Ziro Oten said “Chalne do jaise chal raha hai..jo bhi ho raha hai acha hai.. problem tumhe mehsus hogi agar plan banaoge ya koshish karoge” & that was indeed a true live & practical life lesson !!